Okay, Who Ordered the Indoor Pool?
by akblake
Summary: Hardison finds a surprise which leads to mischief for the entire team, whether they want it or not!


"Now that can't be right… come on sweetheart, why you gotta do this?" Hardison moaned as he caught a flashing sensor light. In particular, a light for a sensor in the brewpub's basement which had no reason to be flashing- no one had gone into the basement, and the only door access to it was in plain sight from where he was sitting. He truly did not relish the thought of monkeying all around the basement, no matter how nearly-sterilized the cleaners he'd hired had left it, looking for the faulty circuit. Not his idea of the perfect Saturday! Still grumbling under his breath, Hardison grabbed his trusty wiring diagram and trudged over to the basement door, passing Parker and Eliot who appeared to be having a far better time watching some foreign kung-fu film on the projector; the lights were flipped on without his eyes leaving the diagram before he wrenched open the basement door, and thumped down the stairs… only to yelp and abruptly stop halfway down when his foot splashed ankle deep into water where there should have been a dry step. The wiring diagram was unceremoniously dropped out of his shocked fingers to reveal a very large indoor swimming pool where he didn't remember having one installed.

Thumping footsteps in response to his yelp caught his attention as he swiftly backed up the stairs, and he bumped into an equally-amazed Eliot and Parker up at the top. A short pushing match ensued as they all tried to gawk in the doorway at the same time only to be broken as Hardison's wet foot slipped off the top step. He grabbed onto Eliot for balance, dislodging Parker who had automatically reached out to steady him, and all three tumbled like puppies into the cold water. "What the hell, Hardison?" Eliot sputtered as he stood, chin deep, trying to shove water and hair out of his face. Parker whooped with exhilaration as she broke the surface and shook her head, spraying them all with water.

"Nuh-uh, you ain't blaming this on me!" Hardison exclaimed as he fended off Parker's impromptu shower. "One of the sensors was going haywire and I just found it like this. Parker, will you stop?!" he demanded as she decided to keep splashing the two men.

Parker vehemently shook her head and sent a wall of water to smack Hardison and Eliot in the face, which was then returned, in stereo, as they retaliated. Thus started the water war, and one of the reasons why Hardison was so very grateful later that he'd waterproofed (everything-proofed, truthfully) all the wiring in the brewpub when he replaced it. Water flew everywhere, sending them gasping at times as particularly hard splashes sometimes swamped their heads, and the occasional laugh escaped even their most stoic member as he launched a particularly good wave.

"I assume there is a very good explanation for this?" Nate's dry voice at the top of the steps stopped their soggy battle cold and brought the three drowned rats sloshing up the stairs. Eliot grumbled and pushed passed them all, wringing out his shirts as he went.

Hardison and Parker moved aside to let him pass, and beckoned for Nate and Sophie to get a look. "Not my doing, I swear. One of the lights was going wiggy and when I came down to check it, I found it like this," he conveniently avoided mentioning their juvenile jostling which landed them all in the water and focused on why their small basement was imitating a pool.

"Someone hit the bypass switch!" Eliot's voice rang out and they all craned around to look. Sure enough, the red handle had been pushed in, sending water into the pipes Hardison still hadn't gotten around to capping off yet, which leaked and flooded the confined space.

A sudden flash of guilt over Sophie's face brought Hardison's attention squarely to her, which captured the others' as well. In the face of that much scrutiny, Sophie had to speak up. "I didn't… well, it was sticking out and looked like it should have been pushed in!" she haltingly tried to defend. Dead silence followed her admission, only broken by the pat pat pat of water droplets landing accusingly on the floor.

Eliot rejoined them, completing the dripping triangle surrounding Nate and Sophie. "Let me get this straight- you sat through Hardison's lecture last week, the one where he expressly and illustratively told all of us to NOT PUSH THE SWITCH IN, and yet you still decided that it needed to be pushed in. Am I right? 'Cause it seems like we only have this mess because you can't keep your hands to yourself! " He nearly shouted in anger.

As Nate prepared to step in and defend Sophie, and as Sophie drew herself up to indignantly reply, the three looked at each other and tried to hide grins of sudden inspiration. Hardison and Parker squeezed back against the railing to make room, and Eliot moved in. Nate and Sophie went flying into the water with gobsmacked looks on their faces at the sheer audacity of the trio, while Hardison and Parker darted through the door. Hardison had it slammed shut and locked bare seconds before the howls and curses from the waterlogged pair began. The three held each other up as they laughed hysterically, but when the noise on the other side of the door became rather inventive threats, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor… especially as Sophie could pick locks.

"I got a hidey hole, you two game? Still have some of our emergency outfits there," Hardison offered. Eliot and Parker both nodded, rather desperately as the noise level had escalated along with the violence of the threats, and the three dashed to Hardison's van in a moment of unspoken communication. Nate could work some of the gadgets in the van to find them, but leaving him to the brewpub's indecipherable system meant that any reprisals would have to wait until they showed back up again. In a day or ten.


End file.
